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YouTube Doesn’t Know What to Do With the Alt-Lite
How faulty academic work and shaky science is fueling a quieter, but equally dangerous form of white supremacy online
As the latest wind of terror swept across America, the media blamed overt neo-Nazis like Richard Spencer, or soft-spoken white supremacists like Stefan Molyneux or Lauren Southern, but almost none would mention a more hidden form of very similar ideas. This group, known for its appeal to shaky scientific reasoning, is referred to as the alt-lite, and it’s gaining communicative power online precisely because it can distance itself from the alt-right.
The characterization of the alt-lite is similar to the “Intellectual Dark Web,” the group first brought to the attention of readers of mainstream media by Bari Weiss in an essay for the New York Times. Some of the group’s figureheads include, but are not limited to, right-wing ideologues like Jordan Peterson, conservative pundits like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder, scientists with fringe views on society like Sam Harris, Charles Murray and Richard Dawkins, and semi-libertarian show hosts like Joe Rogan. Weiss’ characterized the movement as being actively shunned (if occasionally indulged) by the mainstream media, leading them to resort instead to platforms like YouTube to spread their gospel of intellectual reform.
The alt-lite’s association with YouTube goes further than a simple platform to spew their hateful views — it is the mechanism by which the alt-right is able to make a skeptical audience more accepting of its more extreme impulses. A recent study by Manoel Ribeiro, a PhD candidate at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, showed there was a consistent and traceable migration of the alt-lite’s audience into alt-right circles on YouTube. Similarly, in New York Times writer Kevin Roose’s detailed profile of Caleb Cain — a reformed far-right radical — hints of alt-lite content were peppered throughout his YouTube watching history, assuming perfect synergy with alt-right…
